Sir Mervyn King

You may think the big commercial banks got away with it after the great financial crash. But what about the Bank of England? Britain’s central bank was asleep at the wheel when the storm hit in 2007. Mark Carney’s radical shake-up of personnel and responsibilities in Threadneedle Street is an uncomfortable reminder that failure is sometimes richly rewarded.

The blame does not lie with the present governor. Mr Carney was drafted in from Canada last year to replace the departing Mervyn King. The cutbacks in banking supervision that preceded the crash came on the now Lord King’s watch. A reorganisation that leaves Mr Carney with a total of five deputies, however, is a reminder of just how much additional power has accrued to the Bank during the past few years. When the BoE was first granted independence during the late 1990s, the then governor happily settled for two deputies. Read more

If you read today’s Bank of England inflation report, you will notice some welcome changes. More will follow on this blog about the improvements in BoE transparency. In the meantime, the five things you need to know about the bank’s economic outlook are: Read more

If a close confidant had asked Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, a year ago which City institutions he would like to take down a peg or two, the answer might well have been: Goldman Sachs and Barclays.

It has happened more by accident and opportunism than by express design, but during the past six months, the governor has duly hit those banks where it hurts. Read more

The eyebrows of the governor of the Bank of England could become a force to be reckoned with once more.

In the days before the Basel rules, an eyebrow raised by the top man at the Bank — which was then chief financial regulator — supposedly put a stop to any misbehaviour by the banks.

It took slightly more than a raised eyebrow today. But just hours after Sir Mervyn King described Goldman Sachs’ plan to defer bonuses to avoid the 50 per cent top rate of income tax as “disappointing”, the US investment bank backed down.Read more

On the day of the inflation report, the Bank of England came out with its most pessimistic medium-term outlook for the economy, suggesting weak growth would not cause inflation to fall below the 2 per cent target. That suggests no room for more quantitative easing. But is that really the case?

How loose is monetary policy? How big is the QE programme? These were all questions that popped up again and again at Bank governor Sir Mervyn King’s press conference this morning in light of the Treasury’s temporary raid on the accumulated surplus of the QE pot. Here is a timeline of what we know and Sir Mervyn’s answers today. Read more

The reviews into operations during the financial crisis found that officials in Threadneedle Street had learnt “rapidly” and handled the crisis “effectively”, but were also critical of the cental bank’s governance culture.

As expected, the Bank of England today kept interest rates on hold at 0.5% and opted not to print more money.

Analysts’ attention has long focussed on the Monetary Policy Committee’s May meeting; it was always more likely to hold off on plumping for more quantitative easing until then. However, its far from certain whether the MPC will opt for further asset purchases on 10 May.

Here are a few of the factors that are likely to sway the MPC’s decision on whether it adds its the £325bn-worth of asset purchases. Read more

“I do think the experience of the last four to five years has raised some question marks about what inflation targeting can hope to achieve and whether it’s sufficient. I think our feeling now is, on its own, it’s not sufficient, it did not prevent the build up of a large degree of financial instability. And there is I think a debate to be had about whether other instruments are the right way to deal with that, through our Financial Policy Committee, or whether monetary policy should take other considerations into account.”

Could this be the beginning of the end for the Bank of England’s inflation target, at least in its current guise?

It’s far too early to say. Besides, with the governor due to depart mid-way through next year, whether or not the Bank alters its monetary policy framework will largely depend on the views of Sir Mervyn’s successor.

The Money Supply team

Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS

Claire Jones is the FT's Eurozone economy correspondent, based in Frankfurt. Prior to this, she was an economics reporter in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS

Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS

Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s economics correspondent in London. Before that, she was a Lex writer, covered the US economy from Washington and the Icelandic banking collapse from Reykjavik. Sarah studied Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007. RSS

Ferdinando Giugliano is the FT's global economy news editor, based in London. Ferdinando holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University, where he was also a lecturer, and has worked as a consultant for the Bank of Italy, the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oxera. He joined the FT in 2011 as a leader writer. RSS

Emily Cadman is an economics reporter at the FT, based in London. Prior to this, she worked as a data journalist and was head of interactive news at the Financial Times. She joined the FT in 2010, after working as a web editor at a variety of news organisations.
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Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS

Ben McLannahan covers markets and economics for the FT from Tokyo, and before that he wrote Lex notes from London and Hong Kong. He studied English at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007, after stints at the Economist Group and Institutional Investor. RSS